User blog:Refiner/Templates and Forums, Oh My!
If one could look at my profile, one could see that it has been highly condensed into separate templates and a little bit of text. I found this is very useful as I can quickly update a template and my Profile is automatically updated without having to tweak the alignment I have going on there. That said, I have also worked out an Archive template for my Talk Archive to control navigation. I borrowed from the ForumHeader template for this. Earlier I set up the Brainstorming Forum, and its template, so that new topics can be added just as in the Watercooler and Help Desk Forums. It is interesting what can be turned up browsing through the inherent Wiki templates. ^.~ Of Wiki Templates and Tables I commented last night that Wiki Templates are complex Wiki Tables. Text flow is controlled by curly braces { }, dashes - and pipes |. Basically all content is contained within one set of curly braces: single for Tables and within Templates, double for adding Templates to other pages. A pipe | indicates the start of each cell within the table and pipe+dash |- indicates the start of the next row. Closing the table requires pipe+closing curly brace. If creeating a table with the Gui interface, be sure to set the number of columns and a few rows. Most Tables look best with border=0, so delete 1 from the box in the GUI popup unless you want the border. Cellpadding controls the amount of room around the text in each cell. Cellspacing adds space between each cell, visible when border is 1 or more pixel wide. Adding Text or Images into each cell works just like the rest of the GUI: clicking in the first cell and tabbing to each and adding text or inserting images. If you desire to remove the |left or |right off any image in a table, it needs to be done in Source view as the GUI will add it to every image. Use of thumb| is recommended for images larger than table cell constraints. If you find you have not made enough rows, simply press tab in the last cell of the last row and it will automatically add another row. Of Forums Now that I've figured out how to set up the Forums properly, we can open up more discussion regarding the Wiki, the games, Memorial Wall Development, and other relevent topics. Any of our able coders is more than welcome to check out the Forum setup and create a relevent Forum Header Template for new Forums. For Header template examples, see the Water Cooler Template, the Help desk Template, or the Brainstorming Template. Each Forum requires text that will add and display all topics within it. This may be viewed by looking in edit mode at and of these forums: Help desk, Watercooler, or Brainstroming. If you think we need more Forums for discussion, please feel free to propose them in the Brainstorming forum. The code following the HR doesnt like to display in code/preformatted, so I'll modify it enough to allow it to display here. To use this code, you will need to remove the empty space following each opening HTML tag < as well as between each link tag [ and each template tag { leading pair. A few line returns have also been added for this display: after the Category pipes | as well as in the table. Replace the variable ' with the appropriate new Forum, and the ' with an appropriate description. < div class="forumheader">'Forums:' [ Index] > { {PAGENAME}} < br /> Welcome to the . . To add a new topic, please type the title in the box below then click "Add new topic". For other topics in this discussion, please see the [ [:Category:|< tr>< td> < !-- You could create (or transclude) a forum header here --> < createbox> break=no prefix=Forum: preload=Template:Forumheader/{ {PAGENAME}} buttonlabel=Add new topic < table class="forumlist" width="100%">< tr> < th class="forum_title" align="left">Topic < th class="forum_edited" align="left">Last Edit < th class="forum_editor" align="left">Last Author < forum> namespace=Forum category={ {PAGENAME}} shownamespace=false addlasteditor=true historylink=true cache=false Category:Wiki Tips Category:Blog posts